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I have lots of training partners, many of which are stronger than me, and that is all of you. I especially train harder when I know the camera is rolling, so I video all my sets on my big core lifts. Besides, there is no way on God's Green Earth am I ever gonna find someone else to train at 4:00AM

I certainly applaud you tho Big Al - surrounding and immersing yourself with and in strongness has certainly paid off.

It's a well known rule of "real" training that if you're not tracking your sessions, you're not doing it right. As a result pretty much all of us will write down exercises, sets and rep's. Many of us keep a notebook in the gym bag and we all read through the sessions in the training logs but is this enough? How many of us go back through our training logs to review our progress? Having set your goals of deadlifting 600 this year or benching bodyweight, have you progressed? Are you moving in the right direction or are you just spinning your wheels?

If you go through the effort to keep your journal, use it. Are you getting stronger? Are you losing/gaining weight? Is it muscle or fat? Make it count.

Just a comment on the training partner post. If you are a geared lifter, one training partner is not nearly enough. I can usually get in my bench shirt by myself, even when it's tight, but safety dictates at least 3 good spotters when you are holding 600-800 lbs over your face. That being said, I drive about 180 miles(one way) just to train on my heavy bench day. The more, and more experienced, training partners you have the better.

When you are under heavy weight, you will do things unconsciously which effect the lift. Experienced training partners will pick up on that and tell you so you can correct the problem.

As for logs, I keep one and check it occasionally. I might be old, but I usually know about what I hit in the recent training sessions.

Haven't been in here for a while but I thought that this warranted a post. Every time I am in the gym I see people warming up like idiots: bench press 1pps for a set, then 2pps with a few bro taps then 2.5pps or even 3pps for an outright spotter upright row-fest. Now you might think that I'm ranting about the hands-on spotting but that's not even the biggest issue with this loading pattern. Let's take the spotter out of the equation. Say your top set is 3pps for 3 and the set you did before that was 2.5pps for 3. You only really have one working set there. The 2.5pps set is effectively your last warm-up. You then jump to a max set and maybe do some back off sets with 2.5 again. Apart from only getting one working set you also aren't getting the most out of it either. If you made smaller jumps your CNS would be primed and used to the heavier weights and you may get another rep or two out on the top set.

I'm not going to give a rigid plan here on how much to jump by for each attempt but as you get towards the heavier sets, use common sense and make them smaller: use half plates not full ones, then quarter plates or even the small biscuit plates. You'll get more work in and will miss less lifts. Win/win.

Haven't been in here for a while but I thought that this warranted a post. Every time I am in the gym I see people warming up like idiots: bench press 1pps for a set, then 2pps with a few bro taps then 2.5pps or even 3pps for an outright spotter upright row-fest. Now you might think that I'm ranting about the hands-on spotting but that's not even the biggest issue with this loading pattern. Let's take the spotter out of the equation. Say your top set is 3pps for 3 and the set you did before that was 2.5pps for 3. You only really have one working set there. The 2.5pps set is effectively your last warm-up. You then jump to a max set and maybe do some back off sets with 2.5 again. Apart from only getting one working set you also aren't getting the most out of it either. If you made smaller jumps your CNS would be primed and used to the heavier weights and you may get another rep or two out on the top set.

I'm not going to give a rigid plan here on how much to jump by for each attempt but as you get towards the heavier sets, use common sense and make them smaller: use half plates not full ones, then quarter plates or even the small biscuit plates. You'll get more work in and will miss less lifts. Win/win.

Al

Solid posting Al, I have been guilty of this before (making to high of jumps especially when Im pressed for time) but I wholeheartedly agree! Smaller jumps prime the CNS for heavier weights. Too many people commit themselves to injury because they make to high of jumps and end up regretting even coming to the gym that day!

The bench spotting thing is madness in my gym. I have yet to get a single person to spot correctly. EVERY time without fail they have hands on the bar when I tell them not to.
At least once a week I see guys being rowed on their bench presses. On Friday I saw one guy just about do 80kgx6. He then bumped it 100kg and couldn't get a single unassisted rep, ending up with 6 rowed reps. His partner was even worse, did 2 slow grinders at 100kg, then the next 6 were incredibly fast as his partner's arms moved up and down rapidly on the bar.
I've never seen the point as I'd rather know exactly where I am at rather than having a false idea. Same goes for bouncy deadlifts and half squats I suppose.